New Keyboad Layout Introduced

[geno888]

Can you imagine being at the hospital and waiting longer,cause someone has to look for keys.

Can you image at the bank that your account is empty because of a wrong pressed key

[TNT]

@Cynthia I like the pic!

I agree that we should keep what we have. Can you imagine being at the hospital and waiting longer,cause someone has to look for keys.

We deal with that as it is!

[drfsupercenter]

LOL! I still like this one, I mean, HAD we had this it would have been fine but I sure as heck aren't gonna learn to type all over again. I will keep my current keyboard if it kills me

[nteglsh]

Don't think it will happen - most of the computer users are already VERY regular to the QWERTY keyboard..

[TNT]

History is wrought with examples of the masses' stupidity.

Here's a recent e-mail I got:

The accuracy of this information is unknown to me but it sure is amuzing. -D


Does the statement, "We've always done it like that"
ring any bells?

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?

Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US Railroads.


Why did the English build them like that?

Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did "they" use that gauge then?

Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?

Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads?

Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads?

Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.

Now to add a twist to the story;

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs.
The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.

The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel.

The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass.

And you thought being a HORSE'S ASS wasn't important !

[drfsupercenter]

Yeah I heard that story before, but a bit "cleaner" with the terms used to describe stuff.

[philbam]

Great quote TNT, had me (and my wife laughing in the aisles).
Sure shows how resistant we are to change !!!

[dan_24]

I would usually like a bit of change, but really hope this is not the way of the future. Just like everyone else has said, we'll be having to re-learn a whole keyboard. Will take a while to get back up to a decent speed of 80-90wpm.

Having said that, I dont think it has a chance of dumping QWERTY down the drain.

[toomanycats]

It's kind've funny how the people spending years hunting and pecking taut the stupidity of "qwerty". You'd think after all the time they'd get it. You could change it all you want but people will still hunt and peck because deep in the center of our beings, we're all chickens.

[Kabuchan]

I think that the designer's intention is NOT for people to just "get used to it" or for people to retrain their typing skills. The new keyboard would obviously be for a new generation to learn.

I think you are right. I, for one, would never be able to learn a new keyboard. But my three-year-old could get it in a heartbeat.

This link explains why the keyboard looks the way it does...
QWERTY Keyboard

[toomanycats]

QWERTY designed to slow people down! In a capitalist society. That sounds absurd. It is urban legend stuff. Kabuchans link offered a better explanation i.e. the mechanical advantage. If you solve the mechanical advantage then people type faster. If you have used a computer for more than a couple of months and still hunt and peck, lets face it, you are not that serious about typing. I learned to type in high school and even with spinal problems affecing my hands I don't find QWERTY to be difficult. I used to program a $400,000 CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machining center that had the keyboard in aphbetical order. Everyone hunted and pecked on it. It took a couple of weeks before that became second hand. Maybe we should drive on the left hand side of the road or put Monitors sideways so we can surf the internet laying down.

[d00by]

As mentioned above, the QWERTY was designed to INTENTIONALLY slow the typist down!

I dont know where yall got the information that he was trying to SLOW the typest down. Read the article, it says nothing about slowing the typist down. The QWERTY spaces out the most commonly used letters so that on a typewriter, the mechanical heads would not collide with eachother. It also cant be too bad of a system seeing as how people can type 150+ words per minute. I dont think human fingers can type much faster than that on ANY keyboard layout. QWERTY is the standard and I hope it stays. It is AMAZING for gaming as it has the logical keys spaced in a way that they are far enough apart that you dont touch them accidentally but close enough to gether ot use with one hand (other hand on mouse). I think the way this guy has designed the keyboard is logical, but wont ever catch on.

[toomanycats]

The keys were spaced so that the mechanical heads would not collide if the person typing typed the keys too fast. If the common keys were placed in a manner that allowed expedient hammering the speed would cause collisions. The only way they would collide is if the keys are typed too fast, as the letters assigned to the keys would in of themself not cause collision, as the keys have no inherent animosity amongst themselves. Duh Huh.

[TNT]

I dont know where yall got the information that he was trying to SLOW the typest down. Read the article, it says nothing about slowing the typist down. The QWERTY spaces out the most commonly used letters so that on a typewriter, the mechanical heads would not collide with eachother. It also cant be too bad of a system seeing as how people can type 150+ words per minute. I dont think human fingers can type much faster than that on ANY keyboard layout. QWERTY is the standard and I hope it stays. It is AMAZING for gaming as it has the logical keys spaced in a way that they are far enough apart that you dont touch them accidentally but close enough ot gether to use with one hand (other hand on mouse). I think the way this guy has designed the keyboard is logical, but wont ever catch on.

BOY did you dig up an old thread. No offence to kabuchan, (I actually liked the article) but it's just one side of the story. I read this somewhere a VERY long time ago, so I can't honestly quote my sources. But even going by Kabuchan's article, what I said is true. Let's work it out logically.
The machine had mechanical problems which forced him to separate common key combinations like th. Well, if that's the case, it logically means that common key combinations on the qwerty are placed apart. Just for $hits and giggles, try typing thththththththt very fast. Now try hjhjhjhjhjhjhjh. See my point? By separating common combinations, logically, you are intentionally slowing the typist down. QED

The keyboard was laid out for mechanical performance, not for efficiency. Why else would common letters like "e" "n" "t" and "r" not be in the home (middle) row? And why would you have "g" "j" "k" and the ever so useful ";" in the home row. If you can come up with a good reason the ";" key is in the home row, I'll concede.

[Kabuchan]

TNT - I don't think you'll get a straight answer from anyone! This is what I found at Wikipedia ( type qwerty keyboard in the search), which makes more sense:

"Frequently used pairs of letters were separated in an attempt to stop the typebars from intertwining and becoming stuck, thus forcing the typist to manually unstick the typebars and also frequently blotting the document[1]. The home row (ASDFGHJKL) of the QWERTY layout is thought to be a remnant of the old alphabetical layout that QWERTY replaced. QWERTY also attempted to alternate keys between hands, allowing one hand to move into position while the other hand strikes home a key. This sped up both the original double-handed hunt-and-peck technique and the later touch typing technique; however, single-handed words such as stewardesses and monopoly show flaws in the alternation."